Customer Reviews

Broadband Cable TV Access Networks: From Technologies to Applications

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4 star:		(3)
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The book "Broadband Cable TV Access Networks" by Dr. Ovadia presents both a high level overview and low level details of CATV technology. It is a well organized system engineering handbook for cable TV network. It gives an excellent introduction to the overall CATV architecture. The introduction is very descriptive and easy to understand. And then extends to rigorous technical details in transmission technologies (over both fiber and coax cable), RF and digital transceiver design, cable modem protocols, software architecture and applications. The book can be a good tutorial for people interested in CATV technology and a good reference for engineers working in the area.

I am working in MRV Communications in the field of FFTx Receivers Transceivers design, focusing in the analog side of the system video transport.

I had purchased the book and enjoyed reading it. Indeed, it is a great system engineering book covering a broad spectrum of technical subjects which I have a lot of interest. It broadened my knowledge on the arena of CATV which was new to me.
(I came from Israel from the Satellite Communications field).

It is a recommended book to any communications engineer, component engineer and system engineer dealing with fiber optics data communications and video transport.
It covers all design aspects in all perspectives, system wise and component wise.
It provides a broad review, showing the affects of RF chains and , optical links imperfections on a QAM signal in most scientific analytic and professional way.

The book is structured as a zoom-in, taking the reader from a broad picture of definitions, system architectures and topologies such as HFC, PON, zooming into each building block requirements and constrains such as optics CWDM WDM optical none linearity, pre-distortions, CATV receivers topologies , specs and optimized solution. Additionally it covers the aspects of protocols such as DOCSIS and CATV standards showing how to approach to system design, understanding its requirements in order to reach the proper design.

The books provides block diagrams, schemes plots and conclusion to each chapter subject.

Indeed Dr. Shlomo Ovadia did here a huge effort and a great job.
This book is must have in any technical library.

Avi Brillant
Senior Design Engineer
Luninent-Inc
20550 Nordhoff Street
Chatsworth
CA-91311

Cell 818-266-7330

It is very refreshing to read "Broadband Cable TV Access Networks" written by Dr. Ovadia. It might be more appropriately entitled as "Broadband HFC Access Networks". It covers the historic CATV industry, the lightwave transport of video signals (analog and digital Hybrid Fiber Coax, HFC system), the internet on cable mode, the two-way communication between subscribers and service providers and future broadband network using cable infrastructures. Although it is published in 2001, it contains very updated overview of technologies, in particular, related to product ideas for video, voice, data and internet applications. As a matter of fact some of the technologies are still being developed and improved in startup companies.

Shlomo brings all relevant technologies together in this book with the math rigor that brings credence to the CATV/HFC/Access Network industry. It is descriptive and well written that new entrants to the industry can quickly grasp the essence of the technologies and apply them without the math rigor. However, since the industry comprises of cross disciplinary knowledge and practices, a solid understanding through rigorous math treatments is absolutely necessary to create further modification, improvements, innovations and better services to end users.

Dr. Ovadia also includes an updated reference lists after every major subject for readers to further study and details for system and component (optical and electronic) designs. As such, this book serves as good reference book for cable operators, designers, engineering under graduate and graduate students.

Although DWDM application in the HFC network is thoroughly described, the industry is looking to CWDM to continue to bring the product cost down and bring more services to the end users. As well, video over Ethernet is a viable trend because of its inherent low cost and general technological trend. Combination of CWDM and video over Ethernet are the two subjects that need to be covered if a revision is in order.

I only wish I was !! The book shows great promise, it introduces it's topics historically and thoroughly. It gives insight to the new technologies, and background on existing ones that readers may need to understand better.

Here's my only beef : Many, many pages of the 450 are devoted to highly technical math formulas, to the point of having me pass right over them. Calculus and trigonometry experts are encouraged to look here. Others, like myself, ( although I was a good math student with algebra skills) simply will not want to dig this deep. And I mean deep.

This shortened the book for me, however, so the parts that I needed or wanted to know about were explained nicely. I sorta wish that I could return half the book, and keep the other half, because it is a strong, specific book. That is both it's strength and weakness.

This book provides an excellent, clearly written primer for novice and techie alike. The organization of the book takes a reader through a nice, high-level overview including relevant historical information dowin into the detail of the standards, all the while providing clean, well-thought examples which serve to clarify difficult subject matter.

I bought this book needing to quickly come up-to-speed on the particulars of a broadband, HFC network and this book certainly satisfies that need. All in all, a great addition to my tech library.

The book covers the physical layer aspects of modern cable networks, in comparatively greater details than the MAC and transport layers.

The author has done an excellent job in choosing relevant details of each technology presented in the book and laying them out in an easy-to-understand manner.


Overall, it is a good reference book to have within one's reach and is a better starting point in one's understanding of cable networks, instead of searching for terms or concepts using internet search engines.

Dr. Ovadia has written a thorough and carefully researched dissertation on the end-to-end Cable TV network architecture. The book is excellent for both a high level overview of the Hybrid Fiber/Coax network as well as for an in-depth review of the various network components, including laser transmitters and optical fiber amplifiers, plant noise characterization, head-end and subscriber modems, media formats and more. There is also an overview of the Docsis protocol. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the Cable Operator network architecture. The contents should be required knowledge for anyone involved in developing any of the components of a cable TV network.

As a non-expert in the field, "Broadband Cable TV Access Networks" is a very complete book that is well-organized and full of information. The introduction sections are very clear and setup up the rest of the book very well. It is clear that Shlomo is an expert in the field and also a very good writer that integrates difficult concepts into a readable story. On areas that Shlomo is not an expert in, the descriptions are not so complete. Sometimes, the book moves too quickly through the details, but the amount of material in the book is impressive for its size. Overall this is a very good book that holds the reader's interest.

I am working in MRV Communications in the field of FFTx Receivers Transceivers design, focusing in the analog side of the system video transport.

I had purchased the book and enjoyed reading it. Indeed, it is a great system engineering book covering a broad spectrum of technical subjects which I have a lot of interest. It broadened my knowledge on the arena of CATV which was new to me.
(I came from Israel from the Satellite Communications subject).

It is a recommended book to any communications engineer, component engineer and system engineer dealing with fiber optics data communications and video transport.
It covers all design aspects in all perspectives, system wise and component wise.
It provides a broad review, showing the affects of RF chains and , optical links imperfections on a QAM signal in most scientific analytic and professional way.

The book is structured as a zoom-in, taking reader from a broad picture of definitions, system architectures and topologies such as HFC, PON,zooming into each building block requirements constrains such as optics CWDM WDM optical none linearities, pre-distortions, CATV receivers topologies , specs and optimized solution. Additionally it covers the aspects of protocols such as DOCSIS and CATV standards showing how to approach to system design, understanding its requirements in order to reach the proper design.

The books provides block diagrams, schemes plots and conclusion to each chapter subject.

Indeed Dr. Shlomo Ovadia did here a huge effort and a great job.
This book mast have in any technical library.

Avi Brillant
Senior Design Engineer
Luninent-Inc
20550 Nordhoff Street
Chatsworth
CA-91311

Cell 818-266-7330

In this book Shlomo Ovadia gives an excellent introduction to many aspects of CATV technology. Starting from the analog TV background, following by optical transmission, the author covers issues in modulation, impairments, protocols and applications. Although the book is a bit US-centric, and some European standards may deserve more attention (like the DVB set of standards), at the bottom line, I would recommend this book as a reference for digital CATV and cable modem technology.